Hello everyone :)

Just to start out, no, you wouldn't need to know Chinese in order to work on this game :)

I've had an idea for a game that I'd like to try to make, and I thought I'd post to see if I could recruit some people that were of like minds :) I've attempted this project once with a group of friends, but unfortunately we all went our separate ways fairly quickly and barely made any progress on the game. Therefore, I'm starting from scratch again, as our original world concept was still heavily under development and I think we'll all have more fun if we get to design the world (and game) together :)

So, here's the idea:

I'd like to try to make a game that's designed to teach people a foreign language. Now, I know, most learning games are pretty boring, but I'd like this one to be an exception :) The idea is to have a game that's as totally immersive in the language as possible. I don't think there's really any way to avoid giving players vocabulary sheets, so players would be given a list with a few vocabulary words on it and then sent off to do some quests that only made use of those words. Once the quests were completed, they'd be handed a new vocabulary list and given a new set of quests. As time went on, their vocabulary would grow and they'd eventually be able to read the language somewhat. Part of the idea is that the game would need to be interesting enough that people would want to play it even if they weren't learning a second language, as this would provide additional incentive to keep learning the language. To that end, I think it would be nice to have an English version of the game so that people who weren't interested in learning the language would still be able to play it if they wanted to.

Personally, I'm interested in Chinese, so that's the language that I'd pick. I know enough Chinese that I can sort of get around, but I'm far from fluent, so it would help to, at least eventually, have someone else on the team that's more fluent in Chinese. However, if people are interested in another language, we could do that language instead. Alternatively, we could do several languages, although of course that would make things more difficult :)

I'm a programmer, so hopefully I should be able to handle most of our programming needs, although I'd be happy to have someone else along to help out if they'd like to. I'm looking at using RPG maker for the game, but I'm not sure on that yet. Technically speaking, we wouldn't even have to do an RPG if people decided that another format would work better, but I think an RPG would lend itself well to this sort of thing :)

So, here's who we need:

• Game designers: We'll need people to design the world, the storyline, overarching themes for quests, etc. We'd be starting completely from scratch, so you'd have a blank slate to build something interesting on :)
  Writers: I think this position should be fun, as you'll need to be able to come up with interesting dialog using only a very limited vocabulary, at least for the initial quests :) Given that we'll have other people doing translations, you would just need to know English, although if you know another language, too, that's awesome :)


• Artists: We'll need pixel artists, for the tiles and characters and things, but probably also an artist or two for doing non-pixel-art faces and things like that. If we do end up using RPG maker, there are lots of tilesets that we might be able to use, although the licensing on a lot of them is kind of fuzzy, or doesn't allow for commercial use, which would limit our options. Having some con
artists would be cool, too :)

• People who know a foreign language! It would be great to have one or two people who know a foreign language so that we have multiple people to check translations and bounce ideas for vocabulary lists off of :)


• Programmers: As I mentioned, I'm a programmer, and if we go with RPG Maker, we might not need to do a ton of programming, which I'm hoping would speed things up, but if you'd like to be on the team, I'd be happy to have some other people to help me out :) In fact, if you want the programming all to yourself, I have a feeling I might have my hands full coordinating things, so that would be fine with me, too XD


• Other people: If you'd like to be part of the project, we'd love to have you! Let us know if you'd like to help in any other capacity that's not listed above. It'd be nice to have feedback from people who want to learn a foreign language, both when designing the game and during development :)

I'd like the game to be commercial, as I think it will take quite a bit of effort to develop. I'm not sure how much of a market there is for something like this, but I think that there are lots of people who want to learn a foreign language, and a lot of them are gamers, so perhaps there will be a decent amount :) As for pay, it would be profit sharing, as noted in the title.

So far we have on our team a game designer, a concept artist, someone who speaks Portuguese, and someone who speaks some Chinese and is a programmer (that's me) :) We also probably have a musician, which is the only position that are we currently not recruiting for.

If you're interested, please reply :) I hope to hear from some people soon, as I'm really excited about this project, and I'm hoping other people will be, too :)

Edited by wyrmmage - 20 October 2014 at 9:18am

To be honest, we don't really have much at all for the story and game world; we're pretty much building from scratch. However, this means that people on the team can give their input on pretty much everything, which I think is good.

As far as the teaching method goes, what I've had in mind is basically having the users memorize words, and possibly phrases, building from the ground up. Therefore the first quest in the game might involve the user learning the words for "hello" and "Hi, my name is X" and then going around to different members in the starting area and introducing yourself, to practice using the words that you've learned.

One of the difficult things is probably going to be designing entertaining quests that use a limited set of vocabulary and phrases, although there are other obstacles that we'll probably have to overcome, also :)

Hi ZaoMonichi!

Thank you for your interest :) We do still need a pixel artist, as at the moment we have none. I'll add you on Skype, although it might be a few days.

Hi , if you are still looking for an artist I'm interested
you can check out my portfolio here http://irinaanghelportfolio.daportfolio.com/
If anything , feel free to drop me a mail at anir_be@yahoo.com
Cheers
Anir

daLK, that's an excellent question :)

Currently it's not voiced over. We'd like to eventually, but for now, no. There are, however, instructional pages that you're shown in between quests, and those do have a basic amount of training on how to pronounce things in Chinese. Since taking those screenshots, I've also changed the first quest to begin with using the standard system that uses English letters to show how the words are pronounced (pinyin), as an introduction to how to speak Chinese :)

I may look into using a text-to-speech translator for individual Chinese words, too.

daLk, that's a fair point. The first instructional page for Chinese is here, if you'd like to take a look. I'd like to find or make some tone charts for the four tones (like the ones here), but other than that, I think it's mostly finished for now.

The first instructional page has a link to a Pinyin chart, which hopefully can be somewhat helpful to the person who's trying to learn Pinyin, but it's still probably going to be difficult to use if you don't already know how Pinyin works. Maybe linking the pinyin to a clip of it being pronounced would be helpful.

I think pinyin is pretty much the standard for showing pronunciation in mainland China nowadays, so we'll probably try to teach it to the player, although I feel you about it not always communicating how things really sound :) As far as I know, pinyin is also what you use to type Chinese characters on a computer (unless you're using bopomofo, I think), and we're hoping to have the player type simple commands in Chinese sometimes, as a way to reinforce things, so they'll probably need to know pinyin for that, too.

If they're on a touch-enabled device, it might be cool for them to be able to draw the character :) I don't know if it's even possible to integrate something like that in the game without a huge amount of effort, though.

Thanks for your feedback :) How much Chinese did you take, if you don't mind my asking?

daLK, I think ideogram tracing is actually pretty popular for Chinese on smartphones nowadays :) I've seen some Chinese dictionaries where you can draw the character instead of looking it up by radical or another means, which can be super handy :)